Entries in Pakistan
(8)

CDC Clinic Chief Nurse Lee Ann Jean-Louis extracts Influenza Virus Vaccine, Fluzone® from a 5 ml. vial. Vaccines like Fluzone were not included in the study on the pandemic vaccine. (Photo credit: CDC/Jim Gathany, 2003)A new study on a vaccine used to prevent or reduce the occurrence of pandemic flu resulted in a surprise conclusion. The vaccine appears to have a link to narcolepsy, often called “sleeping sickness.”

That study, combined with a flawed U.S. intelligence operation, may further endanger aid workers who often risk their lives to vaccinate children in countries in Africa and Asia.

Dr. Walid Phares’ expertise on terrorism and the Middle East is indisputable, one reason some were surprised when critics accused him of misleading readers in his book Future Jihad: Terrorist Strategies Against the West. Phares’ book was reviewed by a number of people; among those reviewers was Georgetown Professor John Esposito.

Esposito is the founding director of the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding. In August, 2010, Esposito wrote an article for The Huffington Post about Islamophobia, suggesting that American values were threatened because of the “social cancer of Islamophobia that is spreading across the United States, infringing upon the constitutional rights of American citizens…”

Prince Alwaleed bin Talal is a member of the Saudi royal family—in 1999, The Economist called the prince “the world’s second richest businessman.”

In Future Jihad Phares asserted that Jihadists had penetrated US mosques.

Twitter, Facebook and probably every other social media site are sizzling with details of the operation that took Osama bin Laden down. There’s no way to verify any of the information, but it is interesting to see how people around the world react to the death of a man whose actions directly drew the U.S. into long term wars rife with politics and passion. The killing raises as many questions as it answers.

Screen snip of MEMRI video showing exchange between Pakistani actress Veena Malik and a cleric.Until this morning I’d never heard the name Veena Malik. I watched a video created by MEMRI. Malik exchanged remarks with Mufti Abdul Qavi about her actions in India during filming of a program titled Big Boss. MEMRI said the show is similar to the Indian version of Big Brother.

Malik risked her life to defend her actions which run counter to the role of women as interpreted by male clerics in power in Pakistan and elsewhere.

The majestic Iguazu Falls on the Argentine-Brazil border. The falls are part of a nearly virgin jungle ecosystem surrounded by national parks on both sides of the cascades. Beautiful country, Brazil, where the murder rate is more than 4 times that of the US, a fact US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton overlooked recently. [Photo from CIA World Fact Book]Sec. of State Hillary Clinton recently talked to an audience about national security at the Brookings Institute in Washington.

But instead of sticking with national security, she ventured into the realm of taxation. Clinton said the rich in America aren’t paying their “fair share”—she actually applied that statement to any country “facing the kind of employment issues” we’re seeing in the US. And then she praised Brazil for “growing like crazy” despite the fact Brazil has the “highest tax to GDP rate in the Western Hemisphere.”

Clinton not only is guilty of supplying insufficient information about a country she's praising. She's also guilty of hypocrisy when it comes to taxes.

Right about now New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg should be doing some soul searching about his bigotry and thanking God the alleged naturalized citizen’s alarm clock malfunctioned or, depending on whose account you believe, wasn’t set properly. Before the failed bomb was attributed to a Pakistani turned US citizen, Bloomberg implied that someone who didn’t like the healthcare bill might have set the bomb in Times Square.

Irfan Nawaz worked as a doctor at St. Luke's Hospital and Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville. Nawaz was convicted of soliciting a child via computer and traveling to meet a minor to engage in sexual acts. [Photo from Florida Dept. of Corrections]Courts are not known for their wisdom, and the case of Irfan Nawaz is a perfect example. Nawaz practiced as a board-certified internal medicine doctor at St. Luke’s Hospital and the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville.

Nawaz was convicted of soliciting a child via computer and traveling to meet a minor to engage in sexual acts. The Florida Times Union said prosecutors played a tape of Nawaz’s confession during the sentencing phase of the trial. Nawaz made remarks during his confession that suggested his contempt for American women—“[I] was laughing at how stupid girls are in this country, and I thanked God I did not marry someone from this country.”